


[untitled boston-set nbc series, 1982]

by audries



Category: Cheers (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, gay bar!cheers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25537582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audries/pseuds/audries
Summary: “I’ll have you know,” Blondie's saying, raising her chin, “as a student of the humanities, I pride myself on being a very open-minded person, Ms. Malone, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation that—“Ms. Malone. Sam smirks. “Sam,” she says.Blondie’s mouth hangs open for a moment. Sam gestures to herself. “Me: Samantha, Sam. You,” What had the prof said her name was again? “Uh, you…Diane, right?”Blondie—Diane blinks. She takes Sam’s proffered hand. “Diane,” she agrees, a little reluctant, like she wishes she could say it wasn’t. “Diane Chambers.”
Relationships: Diane Chambers/Sam Malone, cheers where everybody's glad you came(out), ummmm lesbian sam malone and Repressed bisexual diane chambers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	[untitled boston-set nbc series, 1982]

Sometime after eleven, Carla nudges Sam hard in the ribs. “Hey,” she mutters, “Blondie over there looks like she could use a pick-me-up.”

Sam looks at where Blondie-over-there is drooping into her low champagne glass. Her sharp little shoulders gone all slanted inside her hot pink blouse, her book closed on the bar. It’s kind of sad, actually. Especially since Blondie is pretty in a hot librarian kind of way, blinking down at the gold rail like she’s trying not to cry.

Carla’s grinning. Sam frowns back. “Yeah, so?”

“ _So_ ,” she nudges Sam again, harder. The slices of watermelon on her earrings swing jerkily with the motion. “Go _pick_ her _up_.”

Sometimes, Carla hits on women _for_ Sam, more right arm than wing woman, because, as Sam reminds her, there’s only one Samantha Malone, and she only has two hands, and isn’t that a disservice to half the unhappily hitched, helplessly heterosexual ladies of Boston proper? Carla is the only Catholic on the premises to have lapsed harder than Sam herself, but she still maintains some sense of Christian charity. Thusly: she preaches the Sammy gospel to the starved, unsaved, over-washed masses. But only because she can’t quite preach herself; Carla, of course, has four and a half children.

The half is Luciano. Nick and Loretta’s kid before he became Carla and Loretta’s kid. Carla was pissed when she found out Nick was stepping out on her, and Loretta was pissed when she found out he was married—and then the two of them met for drinks to be pissed together and somehow came away from it not pissed at all.

There is something about the mere existence of disgusting men, Carla has maintained ever since, that is _such_ an aphrodisiac. Loretta—who comes into the bar now and again to sing off-key and disrupt the drag shows and to swing her platinum ponytail while Carla looks hard at everyone like she’s trying to see who could do without their front teeth—agrees.

Sam rolls her eyes. “Blondie can’t be picked up, Carla. She’s waiting on her fiancé.” She waves the hand that’s not holding a half-sliced lemon to indicate the door said fiancé had left by and would supposedly waltz back in through later. Though it couldn’t get much later. “Some professor guy. Big shot.” Blondie-over-there had been hanging on his elbow like she was planted there when they came in, making eyes that made Sam want to puke. Now she looks all wilted and is making eyes only at the bar rail, which is a shame because, Sam thinks, they were big and blue and the bar rail couldn’t appreciate it. She raises her voice a little. “He’s coming back. Gonna be any minute now.”

“Ugh.” Carla wrinkles her nose. “Well, she’s bumming everybody out, Sammy.”

Sam doesn’t really think everybody can be bummed out, at least not more so than they already are. Isn’t that kind of their collective thing? She glances at Norm, sinking into his stool like it might rise up and swallow him whole, so in the closet outside of this bar you could mistake him for the parka you hung up last winter. What would everyone here even have in common—besides the obvious—if they weren’t all perpetually bummed?

Still, Blondie-over-there had been so cute when she’d come in, quoting some poem that Sam, having only truly attended college in the space between softball games and having retained very little of what she’d learned there in the space between drinking binges, only half-recognized.

But whatever. Bummed or not, it wasn’t so bad to be Sam Malone behind the bar these days. Might not even be so bad to be Sam Malone behind the bar _today_ —big shot fiancé aside. Sam had survived thirty mostly-good years, besides all the drinking and the lapsing and the watching her big brother Derek graduate from Harvard, which he’d attended on a football scholarship, thinking: _If I was him, I’d be so good nobody would even believe it_ , on the basis of one piece of central wisdom. It was this: You never knew.

She had long applied this maxim broadly and fully, and now, in its honor, she brushes off Carla and pulls the cork from Blondie’s champagne bottle with a hard twist of her wrist.

Over the sound of the slow fizz, Sam says, “You alright over here?”

Blondie-over-here shoots a hand out to cover her glass. “No more, thank you,” she snaps, then looks up and winces. Blue eyes like a doll, love of Christ. So ridiculous Sam is actually angry with her for a moment. A hot unexpected flash that threatens to teeter her all the way back to being thirteen and to watching Becky Carlisle at the other end of the baseball diamond, red blonde under in her yellow cap, and to suddenly not being sure what game it was, exactly, she was always so keen to come here on Sundays and win.

“I’m sorry,” Blondie says. “I’m not really in the habit of spending time in bars.”

Sam nods. “Me either.”

“Drinking in bars, I mean.” Blondie looks like she could laugh but won’t.

Sam nods again. “Me either.”

“You tend bar and you don’t drink?”

“I own bar, and I don’t drink.”

Blondie-over-here frowns. “Why?”

Sam raises her eyebrows, and Blondie droops a little again. She’s gonna end up with her face in her champagne glass if she keeps on doing that. Sam resists the urge to chuck her under the chin.

“I mean,” Blondie sniffs, a prim little sound like straightening a napkin, “why do you own a bar if you don’t drink?”

Sam shrugs. “Maybe no one here drinks. Maybe all the drinking you see is just a cover. You ever think of that?”

Blondie says, “Really?” in the same bright way she’d said ‘We’re getting married!’ before her prof had pulled his disappearing act. She pulls back like she hears the echo. “I know this place is,” with heightened seriousness, “ _you know_.”  
  
Sam squints. “Do I?”

The tip of Blondie’s nose goes pink.

Sam had eventually figured out she wanted something from Becky, all those summers ago, she just wasn’t sure what. She'd assumed it was maybe her underhand fastball, which used to kill every right-handed batter on Sam’s team. Which was every batter on Sam’s team, except for Sam.

“A gay bar,” Blondie says, low.

“Oh, my god.” Sam throws a furtive glance over her shoulder at the everybody else Blondie was supposedly bumming out earlier. Norm is shooting spitballs at Carla, who is idly blocking them with her tray. “A gay bar! Doesn’t seem all that gay to me. Do you think we should tell ‘em?”

Blondie is blushing in earnest now, she says, “Now, wait a—“

“Hey! This is supposed to be a gay bar!”

Norm turns and pounds the bar’s flat top with one heavy fist. He lets out a single, sonorous WOO-HOOO. Coach rings the bar bell until Carla threatens to make him hear that sound in his head for the rest of his sorry life, and promptly sticks her fist in it.

“As you can see,” Sam turns back to Blondie, grinning. “We are all very happy.”

Blondie doesn’t grin back. “That is not,” she places her palm flat on the bar like to get a little purchase on the conversation, “what I meant.”

“Mm, I see. You meant a _gay bar_ , not a _gay_ bar?”

Blondie says nothing. Sam nods once. “You did.” She shrugs. “It is.” She cuts Blondie a glance. “That a problem for you?”

“No!” Blondie’s snaps her head up straight. Finally. Squares her skinny shoulders. “No. I’ve,” she lowers her voice, which is kind of sweet even though Sam can’t see the sense in it. Is maybe sweet because of that. In almost a whisper: “I’ve been to one before.” 

Interesting. Sam drops both elbows onto the bar and her chin into her fist. “Oh? Big shot professor man know that?”

Blondie frowns. “Not like that.”

Sam tilts her head in her hand, blowing bangs out of her eyes. “Like how?”

“Like how you meant it. It was with a friend, a fellow student, in London. It was about cultural exposure. An educational experience.” Sam raises her eyebrows and Blondie flushes again, flustered. “We just, I don’t know, we danced.”

“Yeah?” Sam‘s grin could be, has been, called shit eating. She repeats: “Like how?”

“Like—“ Blondie abruptly recoils, smacks the bar, sharper than how Norm had pounded it. Sam blinks down at her hand, which doesn’t look like it should belong to someone making such a racket. “Like absolutely none of your business!”

Becky had eventually taught Sam the fastball out in the field around the local diamond. It took three humid July weekends, two broken nails, and the pinky-swear promise that Sam would only ever throw it for their high school team that coming fall. But, of course, nobody on Becky’s team could take a hit off of Sam after that; she always had been a bit of a liar. It came with the territory.

“I’ll have you know,” Blondie's saying, raising her chin, “as a student of the humanities, I pride myself on being a very open-minded person, Ms. Malone, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation that—“

Ms. Malone. Sam smirks. “Sam,” she says.

Blondie’s mouth hangs open for a moment. Sam gestures to herself. “Me, Sam, you,” What had the prof said her name was again? “Uh, you…Diane, right?”

Blondie—Diane blinks. She takes Sam’s proffered hand. “Diane,” she agrees, a little reluctant, like she wishes she could say it wasn’t. “Diane Chambers.”

“Pleased to meet ya, Diane Chambers.” Sam swings her hand back and forth. Her ring finger has nothing on it but a smear of blue ink, probably from the pen sticking out of her book. Diane starts to pull away and Sam tightens her grip, turning her wrist to inspect her other fingers.

“Jeez, making a mess over here weren’t we, Diane?”

Diane tries for her hand again. “Ms. Malone,” she complains, indignant.

Sam tugs at the bar rag draped over her shoulder with her free hand, flips it to its cleanest edge. “Sam,” she says mildly as she swipes at the ink splotch. “Don’t let me stop ya. You were in the middle of being a very open-minded person?”

“I—“ Diane sounds about ready to whine, or at the very least make another attempt at regaining custody of her fingers. But instead, she straightens up. “I—I believe that every human being has the intrinsic right to love whomever they should so desire. Furthermore, _Sam_ , I believe that every human being is possessed of the immutable instinct to strive towards love—wherever they might find it. And who are we to suppress such an instinct? Isn’t it the mission of every humanist to attempt to forge connection, to make contact, where and however possible? I certainly think it is. And I think, no, I _know_ , that that _connection_ , human connection, is the most important, the most necessary, the most _vital_ thing in the world.”

Diane seems to have talked herself right out of the bar and back into whatever heady, swaddled up little space she occupied before she got dropped here. She looks much younger. Sam feels a flash of that indirect anger again, except now she’s thinking that if big shot prof came back at this exact moment, she’d have Carla lay him flat.

She loosens her grip on Diane’s hand. Diane tenses, cops a mildly wary look as she slowly slides it back to her side of the bar like she’s expecting a trap. The expression is so incongruent with her big, stupid bright eyes, her _knowing_ that _connection_ is the most _vital_ thing, that Sam laughs out loud. Diane frowns harder, bringing her fingers into her lap and turning them over.

And then she isn’t frowning. “You missed a spot,” she sings.

Sam did not. “I did not.”

Diane beams, thrilled, nodding. “You did.” She clutches her hand to her chest like she just won it.

“Let me see.”

“No.” Sam reaches, and Diane leans away.

“Lemme.”

“Nuh-huh. Why? You don’t believe me? You can’t make mistakes?”

If Sam is honest, which she sometimes is, her switch-hitting never was any good. Becky Carlisle used to strike her out on her right side just like everyone else. Swing, swing, swing, and the scuff of her shoe, furious, against the dirt at the edge of the plate.

Sam scowls. “You know what, lady? The only thing missing on that hand,” and she points like Diane could mistake her, “is a wedding ring, and I’ll tell ya something else: It’s gonna _stay_ missing because there’s not a _chance_ that big shot is coming back through that door tonight.”

Diane blinks. Once at Sam, and then three more times down at the bar again. Blondie-over-here, looking like she’s gonna cry. She puts her hand out on her book to draw it to her, and there is a spot of ink, still, between her pointer finger and her thumb. She says, “I’d like to close my tab, please.”

“Ah,” Sam fusses with her hair, pushing it out of her face a little. She’s pretty sure the reason she’d forgotten about Becky Carlisle up until now is that she can remember the game she pitched against her team that first weekend in August. Becky blinking at her wide-eyed, like Diane is now, from behind the chain-link as Sam struck out her fifth through eighth hitters, one after another. Sitting ducks all in a row. “Miss—Diane. I'm sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I’m sure he’s coming back.”

Diane opens her mouth and closes it. She looks like she’d like to argue but can’t think of a way to do it that doesn’t leave her on losing side. Instead, she shrugs. Sounds not a little miserable when she says, “So you don’t believe me?”

About her hand? “I believe you,” Sam clears her throat. “I’m just usually very thorough.”

From where she’s scooping ice out of the bin, Carla calls, “VERY thorough,” and Sam swats at her with the bar rag. Diane is pink again. 

When Carla’s gone, she says, “I don’t mean about the ink. I mean about what I was saying before. About what kind of place this is and,” she breathes in through her nose, “what kind of person I am?”

Sam would like to say: And what kind of person are you, Diane Chambers? Depending on the answer, she would also like to ask if the person Diane Chambers is knows how she’s getting home tonight. But Diane Chambers is looking at her very evenly, very sincere and serene like she didn’t hear her own question, or like, if she did, she meant it how Sam had always meant to be her big brother, how she had always meant to be so good.

“Yeah,” Sam says, “yeah, alright. I believe you.”

Diane smiles, content, and settles back into her stool a little. “I might as well take a bit more of that champagne,” she says, “Sumner did say not to expect him back before midnight.” Sam pours and feels bright, itchy, too hot. The bar clock reads 11:46. Diane laughs and says, “You know, I even did my undergraduate thesis on Marlowe.”

When the big shot prof had left Diane here, he’d turned to Sam and said, don’t give her any trouble now, and then laughed at himself, snide, remembering where he was, and added, actually, this might be the safest place I could leave my bride-to-be.

Diane is looking up expectantly. What Sam remembers best about Becky Carlisle is the long slow slice of her freckled arm, throwing pitches that, even on the come-up, you knew in your bones, in your twisted gut and your hot chest, were strikes.

What she remembers best about throwing those pitches herself, later, is the taste of diamond dirt. Even though she’d been winning.

Diane doesn’t have an underhand fastball. Doesn’t look like she’s ever thrown anything in her life, except the occasional hissy fit—her nails are long and her wrists are thin and when Sam had held her hand to clean it she had felt her pulse, fast like a rabbit, or like she’d been running. There is something else, Sam thinks. Maybe this time something with a curve.

Diane says, “Sam…?”

“Um,” Sam says, “Ditto.”

To the professor, Sam had said: Soooo safe. And then she had smiled and promised.

No trouble, she’d said. No trouble at all.

**Author's Note:**

> if i had any sense at all this would obviously be called "queers"


End file.
